Evening Reading

Note: Limelight is going to be doing router maintenance tomorrow morning between 4AM and 6AM Shack time. The site will likely be down for all or part of that time, so don't panic if you're not able to connect during that timeframe. We'll be up again as soon as possible.

The announcement that Dead Space 2 is getting some single-player DLC actually has me pretty excited, and a bit relieved that it's not multi-player based.

See, I've gone back in and done some more horsing around with Dead Space 2's multi-player bit, and while it certainly works just fine, it's really not very good at providing an experience that's remotely as compelling as the single-player stuff. I've decided that a lot of this has to do with the fact that having multiple players on the human side of things completely negates any tension the game tries to build. It also seems from my (still relatively limited) experience with the multiplayer, that a coordinated team of human players can readily handle rushes from the monster team.

I guess I just feel that in order for a multi-player component in a game like Dead Space 2 to have staying power, it needs to tap into what makes the single-player experience so compelling. Even simple variations, like a mode that pits one human player against four or five Necromorph players, or more heavily stacking the number of players on the Necromorph side, would do wonders in providing a more congruous multi-player experience. That is, if the game even needs a multi-player component at all.